


菊枝垂れ：Like Stolen Bits of Light

by takaraikarin



Series: ソメイヨシノ [3]
Category: Alice Nine, Jrock, Visual Kei - Fandom, Vivid, the GazettE
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Romance, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 19:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takaraikarin/pseuds/takaraikarin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The longer he stared at the wizard’s relaxed face, the longer his eyes fixed on the movement of his eyes beneath delicate-looking eyelids, he started feeling like if he could just reach out he could slip beneath those eyelids and seeped into whatever image he’s dreaming of.</p><p>Somewhere, a shidarezakure tree bloomed out of season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	菊枝垂れ：Like Stolen Bits of Light

**菊枝垂れ：Like Stolen Bits of Light** (A xxxHolic/J-Rock crossover)  
 **Pairing: Shou/Uruha; (future) Tora/Saga; (future) Hiroto/IV**  
 **Bands:** Alice Nine, The Gazette, ViViD  
 **Beta Reader:** [](http://hunt4me.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://hunt4me.livejournal.com/)**hunt4me** thank you for taking the time to look over this! (all remaining mistakes are of course mine)  
 **Rating:** Gen  
 **Summary:**  
The longer he stared at the wizard’s relaxed face, the longer his eyes fixed on the movement of his eyes beneath delicate-looking eyelids, he started feeling like if he could just reach out he could slip beneath those eyelids and seeped into whatever image he’s dreaming of.

Somewhere, a shidarezakure tree bloomed out of season.  
 **Disclaimer:** I don’t own anything including the story idea. I also don’t own xxxHolic. That’s all CLAMP’s.

Title is read as ‘kikushidare’.

| [Part 1 of 5 - ソメイヨシノ ： The Sky in Bloom](http://takarai-karin.livejournal.com/104576.html) | [Part 2 of 5 - 枝垂れ桜 ： Rewinding Spring ](http://takarai-karin.livejournal.com/104907.html) | 

For all his worth, Saga was by no means a complete skeptic in life. He knew weird things happened to him, things that won’t even cross the minds of most people. He also believed he had the most rotten luck possible a human being this side of the Pacific was capable of having, without it being actual death. His friends back in high school sometimes teased him and called him a sore loser when he complained about losing the draws to clean up the class _again_ for the hundredth day in a row.

Or that one time when the capsule he sat in got jammed at the top of the Ferris wheel, stopping the whole thing completely and delaying their school’s graduation trip schedule by three hours.

Or when he almost burned half the kitchen of Wendy’s branch in Ometesando on his first day working.

It just wasn’t the kind of bad luck a normal human being would have, and he was always convinced he was cursed somehow.

The worst was actually the little gaps he has in his memory. Things he’d have trouble remembering even though classmates and family members thought by all means he should remember them. Trying to force his head to focus on those gaps, willing it to be filled would sometimes leave him with the worst headache possible.

The calm-looking wizard in front of him (who was just as calm as when he first introduced himself as a _freaking wizard_ ), who had asked for him to write his name down, said he’s the kind of human who attracts these beings called (really, this was what he said) _ghouls_. And they were the ones drawing in all those bad luck, like they are prone to do.

It’s curious that somebody with such a strong pull for such creatures have no ability to See, and Saga mentally replied that was the only good fortune he had left, that he couldn’t see or feel any of those creatures. He couldn’t imagine how miserable he’d be if he could actually _see_ them.

‘Ah, but how can you protect yourself from something you can’t even see?’ the wizard asked. Saga’s eyes widened. He was sure he didn’t say that last part out loud.

The wizard was smiling still.

‘I think it would be wise to at least equip you with _some_ kind of protection.’ He turned to the black-haired man beside him, the one that had dragged Saga inside. ‘Tora-shi?’

‘Yeah?’

‘How do you feel about helping our customer here with his spiritual energy?’

‘You mean, like, train him?’

‘Well, you are very familiar with spirit training, so I don’t see why—’

‘I—’ Saga tried to say, ‘Am I really supposed to do this?’ No really, what did he get himself into?

The guy called Tora sighed. ‘Look. Shou’s right. There’s only one thing you could do and that’s to build up your own defence. Those things like me a whole freaking lot, too. It’s the only way I’d get any peace of mind.’

The thing is, Saga was never a complete sceptic. He believed in things like luck, and he also had a penchant for getting really strong gut feelings that turned out to be right after all.

That one afternoon, looking at the guy’s dark eyes, Saga’s gut told him he could trust Tora.

So he agreed.

*

Shou, who always knew he could trust his instinct, smiled encouragingly when the nervous looking boy took Tora’s proffered hand and agreed to train with him. There was a compatibility surrounding the two of them, he could Sense it.

Shou, after all, knew very much about spiritual trainings.

*

All his life, Shou has lived with a strict set of routine. Wake up at dawn and climb up the hill to fetch some water from the stream. Clean the temple. Sweep the entire yard surrounding the temple clean of leaves. Wash himself and then sit in the contemplation room and memorize scripture until it’s time for lunch and for the second part of the cleaning duty to start. Afterwards, more scripture-reading until supper, then followed by even more scripture-reading (usually with one of the more senior monks), all the way until bedtime. Wash, rinse, repeat.  
It wasn’t that Uruha didn’t have any routine, it was just that time had a habit of working differently around the shop.

Usually, Uruha would have already been awake by the time Shou woke up, regardless of the time of the day. At first, Shou wasn’t even sure if Uruha slept at all, but then, he once caught Uruha having fallen asleep in his usual chaise. Shou had been on his way in and wasn’t able to stop himself from staring.

The longer he stared at the wizard’s relaxed face, the longer his eyes fixed on the movement of his eyes beneath delicate-looking eyelids, Shou started to feel like if he could just reach out now… he could slip beneath those eyelids and seep into whatever image Uruha was dreaming of.

Somewhere, a shidarezakure tree bloomed out of season.

Finding his breath completely synch with Uruha, Shou felt himself leaning closer.

Something was shimmering, like silk threads beyond Uruha’s eyelids. _If he could just touch them…_

A spark went in between Shou’s outstretched hand and the sleeping man in front of him and Shou pulled his hand back with a gasp.

_What was that?_

He shook his head a few times to clear the feeling of being drawn in to the wizard. It felt too strange, that sensation of wanting—no, something in his head even said _knowing_ —that he could seep under Uruha’s skin. With one puzzled glance at the wizard, he exited the room.

He missed how Uruha’s eye fluttered open and watched him left.

*

Some other things about living with a dimension wizard: constantly be ready for everything out of the ordinary.

‘Ordinary’ for Shou these days would be to find confused looking on their front lawn and escorting them to where Uruha was, to see what they wanted out of the shop. Sometimes the customer came out of the shop in anger, or in complete euphoria, clutching on to whatever they’d received.

Very few people knew what they really wanted.

Yesterday, a man wanted Uruha to burn a kimono into ashes. ‘Nobody else could do it’, he explained, ‘I need it to be purified.’ Uruha did as he was told, but Shou saw the woman who had owned that kimono. _I jumped off a cliff in Izu,_ she whispered to Shou, _He was supposed to jump with me because he said he’d rather die than marry someone else_. Instead, he stood still on the edge of the cliff as he watched her jumped. The exact moment the kimono was burned completely and her spirit floated away from the ashes. She then wrapped her hands around the man’s neck.

 _This way we’ll be together forever, like we’re supposed to._ She said, smiling a hollow smile.

Shou didn’t bother telling the man about it as he exited the shop, satisfied that he’d burned away his past.

Shou turned to Uruha as he rested his smoking pipe against his lips while watching them leave.

‘He didn’t once say anything about praying for her soul. He only wanted to get rid of the kimono. The payment wasn’t for anything more.’ The wizard said, smoke slipping through his pink lips and curling through the room, suffusing it with the sweet scent that could only be Uruha’s.

‘I think you did the right thing. Humans can be very foolish.’ Shou said, still watching the spirit staring longingly at the man’s face.

Uruha looked mildly surprised at that, before a small smile bloomed unexpectedly on his face.

‘Unordinary’ for Shou was a bit trickier. But this one definitely counted as that, because he came into the _ima_ and the fusuma door leading to the north garden was opened, and water was pouring beyond it. It looked like they were on the inside of a waterfall.

The heavy rainfall brought an Inugumi, a messenger sent by the Ame Warashi. Uruha, who didn’t appreciate the disturbance to his flower beds of tsubaki, clucked his tongue and narrowed his eyes at rain spirits who couldn’t be bothered with basic courtesies. The slit on the side of his kimono displayed long expanse of his bare legs crossed at the knees as he didn’t even bother rising from his position of lounging on the chaise. His thin ankle bobbed up and down, making little tapping noises against the tatami. It was a habit Uruha only does when he’s annoyed.

Apparently the Inugami, whose name was Chiyu, noticed that too, and quickly relayed the message on how the rain spirit Takeru, who needed help with his cloud parasols, which he would then give one to Uruha anyway (it was that time of the season where the Ame Warashi would start giving out rain protections). He only needed help acquiring the birches necessary for the core, which was something neither Chiyu nor Takeru are capable of getting.

Slightly placated, Uruha sighed and asked where Takeru wanted him to carve out the wood from.

‘Um.’ Chiyu was once again fidgeting, and Uruha’s eyes narrowed in suspicion again. ‘Actually, he wanted that human that smelled like sakura right there,’ Chiyu pointed straight at Shou.

Nao whistled from the corner of the room. ‘Is Takeru already taking a liking? Wow, you’re quite the popular one, eh, Shou?’

Uruha placed his pipe back in the holder with a loud clack.

‘Is that so,’ he said, voice alarmingly even. From where he stood Shou could see the corners of Uruha’s eyes twitching. ‘Go with him, then Shou. This would be a good way to endear yourself to the spiritual world,’

Shou wasn’t really sure what made Uruha sounded so irritated, but he could only accept the task from the wizard anyway, so he stood up and was about to follow the Inugami through the water curtain when he felt a hand touch his sleeve.

Uruha stepped up, stood close to him and said in a near whisper, ‘Be careful and bring back the parasol for me,’ his hand was still touching the sleeve of Shou’s yukata, and that was when Shou noticed he’d slipped a small object inside said sleeve. Shou touched the thing with his finger and raised a questioning look at Uruha.

‘For protection,’ he answered, a small smile playing on his lips. This close he was almost too overwhelming to look at.

Vaguely, he could hear Chiyu clearing his throat.

Blinking, Shou nodded quickly and turned to face the Inugami before he’d get further distracted.

*

The ame warashi was a constantly-smiling spirit with silver hair and stars crawling up one side of his head. There was a perpetual glint in his eyes and Shou remembered hearing that the rain sprite was a mischievous one. He declared the Aokigahara forest to be ‘devastatingly boring even though I was being super positive about it’ and glomped at Chiyu when they arrived. He eyed Shou with interest the whole time he was climbing up enormous birch trees looking for the core to give to said rain spirit.

Once, without Shou noticing, he was already floating right behind him and seemingly breathing down his neck.

Chiyu pulled him by the waist of his hakama and told him to stop bothering the human.

‘I know you’re interested in him, but you shouldn’t—’

‘But Chiyu, I’m not interested in him, he smells nothing like sakura trees!’ Takeru exclaimed.

Chiyu blinked at that, and so did Shou. Takeru stepped closer to the human again and leaned into his body.

‘See,’ he sniffed, and stared up at Shou. ‘You don’t smell like sakura at all, you smell like tsubaki.’ He was positively sulking, but Shou wasn’t sure what to say to that.

Chiyu clearly knew how to handle it though, for he pulled Takeru away again and made him continue with the cloud parasols.

When Shou came home later that day carrying a shining cloud parasol, Uruha was in the sun room cradling his shamisen.

His hand was light on the _bachi_ , plucking out melodies that seemed to match the constantly changing pattern of clouds on the parasol Shou had opened in front of him. Shou always felt it was easier to gauge Uruha’s mood while listening to his playing, rather than trying to read him directly. The wizard stopped after the song ended, placed the instrument back in its velvety box, before raising the edge of his kimono to step over the box and picked up the parasol.

‘Thank you,’ he said, leaning forward and brushing his lips against Shou’s cheek, light as a feather, almost like Shou could dream it away.

The wizard retreated after that leaving a rather dumbstruck Shou in his wake.

It was Nao, who found him still rooted in place sometime later, asking him what was wrong. Jolted back into reality, the human was quick to answer that nothing was, and he’d probably better wash up before preparing dinner. He passed the Worlds’ Traveller, but he stopped and turned back around when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

‘Shou, you’ve dropped something,’ he pointed.

Shou picked the object up, realizing it was the thing Uruha gave him earlier.

‘Isn’t that… Uruha’s _nioi-bukuro_?’ Nao asked, and Shou realized it was indeed the fragrance sachet, shaped like a flower, that Uruha used to aromatize his kimono with.

‘Uh. Yeah. He gave it to me before I went with the Inugami, for protection.’

Beside him, Nao snickered. ‘He gave it to you?’ he said, clearly holding in laughter as he walked away, shaking his head and mumbling to himself. ‘For protection? Yeah right.’

Shou wondered if he really wanted to know what Nao was so amused about.

*

Sometimes Uruha would work on errands he couldn’t do from the shop and visited mountain shrines where solitary youkais lived, or go and talk to lesser dragons in small streams so they’d allow him to collect their water-colored scales. More often than not, now, Shou went with him.

They were coming home from a lovely visit to a shop owned by a family of kitsune, a package of fragrant kitsune-udon in Shou’s hand now, when Uruha stopped his stride.

‘Wait.’ He eyed the spirit emerging near them.

The man in the corner of the street was barely in human form anymore. His soul was in tatters.

‘That uniform… he’s probably with the Resistance Group.’ Shou explained. ‘The fight near Kamakura was very bloody they say. The Ookuni clan is using western explosives now.’

Uruha clucked his tongue. There were pity and disdain in his eyes.

‘Of course the dead won’t peacefully cross over if they’re killed by being blown to pieces. What use is such a ghastly manner of fighting? Such foolish humans.’

Shou looked at the frown decorating Uruha’s delicate brows and willed himself not to try and smooth it away. Uruha turned to him. ‘Can you fetch me my prayer beads? I want to help him cross over,’

Shou fidgeted a bit at that. ‘I’d do that, but I can’t.’

The frown’s back on Uruha’s face again. ‘What do you mean you can’t?’

‘I can’t see the shop when you’re not in it.’

The wizard’s eyes widened at that, mouth parting slightly. Shou knew it was a curious thing indeed. Nao-san was certainly puzzled when he heard it. He never knew it’d be such a shock for Uruha though. If anything, he thought Uruha would explain to him _why_.

Finally, Uruha sighed as if he’d decided he’ll deal with the issue later and raised his hand, palm opened expectantly.

‘The purifying salt, then?’

Shou handed the salt pouch to the wizard and looked on as he made his way to the restless soul. He made sure the soul didn’t exude any unusual hostility as Uruha poured salt onto the ground. Hands clasped, he recited the cleansing prayer. He poured more salt onto the ground. It was trickier without his prayer beads, but the soul dissipated after awhile before having disappeared completely.

*

Being an Elemental Artist is one thing, but being the proprietor of the shop was another thing altogether, and Shou never thought he’d ever felt the desire to become one, but the Want ended up blooming in him after all.

It all started when the spring’s sakura brought about a man in black clothing to their front door. He was dressed the way foreigners that Shou would sometimes saw in the market would.

The man smelled of sakura, but Shou never knew it could be as intimidating as what he felt exuding from the man.

Shou was not one to judge people by their appearance –he had many other things to judge them from, not least of all their aura— but the man just wasn’t even trying to hide anything. The energy he projected was of calmness on the surface, but if one would go slightly deeper, a touch of danger could be sensed. He also smelled of too sweet, too fresh-scented blood.

‘He’s the _sakurazukamori_ , Kamui Gakuto,’ was how Uruha introduced him to Shou, a hint or wariness in his voice. The man smiled at the introduction, and Shou knew not to be fooled by it.

Uruha had very little respect for people who used spiritual power to do the dirty deeds of this world. That was what the sakurazukamori did: he used the power harnessed from his shikigami for nothing more than politics. Nothing more than killing people the government told him to.

The sakurazukamori stared at Shou when Uruha talked to him. ‘You’re a child of a sakura tree, too,’ he said and it wasn’t a question. Shou knew he felt it too when something in him reached forward, wanting to gauge Kamui’s energy. The man smirked and Shou could feel an alien energy probing back at his defense.

‘He’s an interesting one,’ he said to Uruha. ‘I can’t believe you’re cheating on me with another yozakura child,’

Uruha’s face said he was deeply vexed by that, and it kept clouding over as Kamui reached out a hand towards his face. Uruha jerked his head away and the man could only touch the tips of his hair. He was still smiling when he kissed it. ‘I came to ask if the dimension wizard has grown to like the sakurazuka just a little. Your father was always so cooperative.’

‘My father wasn’t right in the head.’

Kamui laughed at that, low and dangerous, and Shou wanted nothing more than to stand in front of Uruha and shield him. That, of course, sounded ridiculous because Uruha was more than capable of defending himself.

*

He was right to be worried.

*

You see, you should never ever trust dimension wizards as a matter of course. Sure, each of them had different temperaments, but the old owner of that shop had a nasty habit of not caring at all for the human whose dimension he resided in. As in, even more so than most. And considering that most dimension wizards already saw humans as mere foolish creatures, that was already saying a lot.

The old dimension wizard didn’t see anything wrong with the sakurazukamoris, and would grant any of their wishes as long as they paid the suitable payment.

Once, a hundred years back, said dimension wizard let a sakurazukamori purchase a box to trap souls. The only thing they would need was something from the person that they wanted to trap.

When Kamui came to that shop that one red afternoon, he took a piece of Uruha’s hair and put it in the box itself.

Uruha fell asleep that night and in the morning, nobody could wake him up.

*

It was Nao that tried to calm him down, saying the sakurazukamori wouldn’t wish permanent harm on Uruha—that’s out of his power spectrum anyway—and he probably saw this as a game because he’s had his eyes on _this_ dimension wizard for a while now.

Shou wondered why Nao-san would think that would in any way calm him.

They waited until the full moon rose, because that was when Uruha’s energy was always at the strongest, but the full moon came and went and the wizard was still lying asleep on his bed.

Shou had taken to meditate beside Uruha’s bed at all times of the day now. He wondered if he was dreaming it, but he felt closer and closer with Uruha still the longer he meditated. It was that feeling again: of synchronizing his breath with Uruha and feeling like if he could just reach out he’d slip inside the world behind those closed eyelids.

But it still took him by surprise that one time when the scent of sakura wafted through the room and he watched spider-web patterns crawling over his skin and spreading towards Uruha. The web grew longer and larger and Shou watched in fascination as it reached Uruha’s prone body.

‘Shou, I’m— whoa.’

The image in front of Nao when he came inside Uruha’s room would be shocking for anybody who wasn’t a traveller of Worlds. The room smelled like sakura, almost sickeningly sweet at that, and that would’ve worried him of the sakurazukamori if not for the fact that the scent seemed to be coming from Shou. And so was the spider-web pattern covering the side of his face and seemed to be now crawling all over Uruha.

‘…you’re a Dreamweaver?’

Shou, his eyes glinting strangely, turned to him. ‘I— don’t know?’

‘That would be a resounding yes, you are.’ Nao said in conviction, muttering about how tangled fate threads can explain _that_. It’s a good thing Worlds Travelers’ aren’t easily spooked.

Shou was already back to looking in fascination as the web now went up to Uruha’s neck, making beautifully alien patterns on his skin. This would connect him to Uruha, he knew it. He could feel it.

‘Listen.’ Nao tried to get his attention. ‘This is ridiculous and this has gone on long enough, so I’m gonna go find Uruha’s Old Man, okay?’ Shou turned to him at that.

‘Can you do that?’

‘It might take a while. I’m not sure which universe he’s in right now. So I should go now.’ He made to turn but halted in the threshold. ‘Um— I guess you’re gonna slip into Uruha’s subconscious, now?’

Clearly Shou never heard of anything more appealing than that, it was in his eyes as his gaze once again transfixed on Uruha’s body, now bearing the Dreamweaver’s mark all over. ‘Can I?’

Nao’s head really didn’t wanna go there, but he said anyway.

‘That might help stabilize his conditions while I search for his dad. It’s probably a good idea.’ _Just make sure you’re back in the physical world when you discuss the word ‘consent’_ was what he wanted to add, but his head still refused to go there so he just waved hurriedly to open the dimension portal.

Shou climbed on the bed, feeling the web guiding him into the world beneath those eyelids. He could feel the wizard’s soft breath against his skin and he inhaled them. It only took three intakes of breath for Shou before he could feel his subconscious taking over.

*

The second thing Uruha said when he saw Shou in his dream was ‘I’m going to kill my father.’ (The first one, which was said after a long silence, was ‘since when are you a dreamweaver?’)

Shou smiled at both utterances. The inside of Uruha’s dream felt too warped for his mind—probably because it was artificially made anyway, and inside here he could feel what actually powered the confinement. A thread of energy within the dream was attaching itself to Uruha, and feeding itself with Uruha’s own energy, like a sinister umbilical cord.

‘Nao-san is off looking for him anyway, so if you want to kill him, you’ll get your chance soon.’ Shou said as he observed the cord. There were too many alien elements around this dream, they needed to tread carefully. He imagined it in his head—some kind of defense mechanism, something to keep them within the elements they could control. He wasn’t even surprised when spider threads emerged and started weaving around and over the both of them, creating a dome of some sort.

‘It’s pretty,’ Uruha said, looking up at the dome and in doing so shadows of the spider-web created otherworldly contrast of dark and light patterns on his upturned face.

‘Yeah, it is,’ Shou said, looking at the wizard.

‘And now we wait for your father.’

*

It was ridiculously easy for Uruha’s father to pull them out of Uruha’s subconsciousness. It was nearing laughable, but Shou was almost drained of energy after he woke up—it was a long time to be inside someone’s dreamscape on their first time.

Uruha was still underneath him on the bed, his pulse too slow for Shou’s liking but he’s still breathing, so Shou took that as a great victory.

Above him, somebody was clearing his throat. Shou turned his head and saw Nao standing there making wild gestures and pointing to a dark-haired man standing in front of him.

It took Shou a full half a minute to realize the man was Uruha’s father that Nao has been searching for and that it would probably be a good idea to not be lying on top of his son right about then.

The man looked mildly amused, but Shou was still mortified.

*

The mildly amused look was apparently a permanent one on his face. It was that same expression that he wore as Shou sat in a seiza position in front of him, feeling like he was ten again and being reprimanded by one of his guru.

He looked younger than Shou had imagined, sitting there in an elaborate robe with his long dark hair tied at the nape of his neck. He also looked deceptively unassuming, but by then Shou had known better.

The wizard was still smiling behind his round spectacles when he broke the silence ‘So,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘I know what you Want. And I know how much you must pay for it.’

Shou stared straight at him, knowing the man’s in his mind, reading between the folds of his brain and letting him do so. He felt an alien thought entering his mind. It was of him standing in Uruha’s _ima_ , and beyond the open door, the season flashed forward behind him. Summer to autumn to winter to spring and back to summer again. And a shidarezakura tree bloomed out of season in each one.

When the thought disappeared, Shou knew what was needed to be done.

‘I’ll pay the price of my Want.’ He said.

The man smiled slightly wider.

*

It took a while for Uruha to recover his drained energy, and he spent most of those time sleeping. And Shou spent most of that time slipping into his dreams. Uruha’s father had checked on him in the beginning and deemed that he was sleeping normally to build his energy back and that there weren’t anything they should worry about.

‘Take care of my boy. And the shop.’ Was what he said before he went through the portal again.

When Shou slipped into his dream for the second time, he was pleasantly surprised that Uruha’s real dream had more colors. He blinked at Shou when he saw him, before his eyes widened almost comically.

‘You— that key—’

‘Oh. Right, you can see it in the dream, your father’d said.’ Shou smiled. ‘Yeah, I swallowed it. I guess you’re stuck with me in the shop now.’

‘Why would my father let you swallow the key to the shop?’

‘It was the payment for my Want.’

Uruha halted at that, before he pressed on, eyebrows knitted in a frown. ‘What in the world is worth as much as your humanity? Because that’s practically what you’ve given up, to be the keeper of the shop, why would—’

‘Uruha…’

The wizard paused at that.

‘I don’t mind,’ Shou answered in a near whisper, his hand raised to cup Uruha’s face. ‘It was worth it.’ He smiled.

Uruha’s lips parted in astonishment before comprehension dawned. He still frowned at Shou. ‘You’re not right in the head,’

‘Then I’ll fit right in as the keeper of the shop.’ He chuckled against Uruha’s lips.

Shou opened a connection to the conscious world and woke the both of them up before capturing Uruha’s lips in a real kiss.

When he fell into a real sleep that night it was to the sound of Uruha’s shamisen playing in the background, weaving alien dreamscapes beneath his eye that he couldn’t turn away from.

*

There was music wafting through the shop that day, Shou noted with fondness. Their newest customer brought a guitar to the shop yesterday, and apparently he did so today, too. His melody was happy and carefree and that suited the boy so well Shou couldn’t help but chuckle.

*

Hiroto wondered that first time if the proprietor would be okay with him bringing instruments into the shop, but he’s barely had enough time in his schedule to put his guitar back at the apartment first before coming over, so he figured what the hell, he’ll just have to risk it.

It was very silent in the shop the first time he came in with his precious Gibson in hand. He was rushing a bit. He needed to finish composing a piece to be put in his demo tape. An audition with an already notable indie band was at stake.

Both of the twins—he’d just managed to remember which one’s which—was gathering around him the moment he settled into one of the tatami rooms. Iv was looking unblinkingly at the instrument while Hiroto struggles with key progression. Even after Ko-ki had left to go look for more entertaining company to play with after growing bored of staying still in that room, Iv was still there with his curious eyes. Once, he noticed the boy reaching out slowly towards the strings and when Hiroto said ‘that’s okay, you can touch it,’ he jolted backwards as if burned.

Hiroto smiled. ‘Here, you hold it like this,’ he guided the boy’s fingers to the keys, making him hold the position before taking Iv’s other hand so he could pluck the strings. When it made a few tinkling noises Iv turned to him with the most astounded expression on his face.

‘That was… this?’ Iv pointed.

‘Yeah. That was that,’ replied the blond. ‘Did you like the sound of it?’

Iv nodded enthusiastically at that.

‘Why don’t I play something for you later, huh?’

Hiroto earned himself a bright smile at that, Iv’s eyes twinkling along with mirth. And that’s—wow.

He could get used to receiving that kind of a smile.

**Stop.**

 

This entry was originally posted at <http://takaraikarin.dreamwidth.org/104545.html>.

**Author's Note:**

> 01\. 菊枝垂れ (き・く・し・だ・れ = ki ・ku ・shi ・da ・re) is a Cheal's Weeping Cherry.  
> 02\. Ame warashi (雨童子, lit. 'rain child') is a sprite capable of bringing rain. As for information on Inugami you can go here. Additionally, this is the silver-haired ame warashi and his cloud parasol (lol it was so meant to be)  
> 03\. If you found yourself googling 'mount fuji vegetation' and studiously learning this table and going 'see, I knew they got birch trees over there!' for a freakin J-Rock fic, you're probably just being anal for the heck of it (my excuse)  
> 04\. In case you’re unaware of the original canon, Uruha’s father is the creator of the shop, which means he’s Clow Reed. No elaboration because I don’t want to drag too much xxxHolic canon to this and confuse those who never read/watch it.


End file.
